More DNS-zone control

[ClayRabbit]

Why we are unable to edit SOA record? (To define right email, for example)

Why we are unable to edit TTL of the records? (Sometimes it's useful to change TTL. For example, reduce it before moving site to another IP or server.)

Why we are unable to edit MX-record fully? I mean, we need all 3 fields (not 2) editable.
Because sometimes we need to add MX record for subdomain.
subdomain1 IN MX 10 mail.server1.com.
subdomain2 IN MX 10 mail.server2.com.

Similar for NS-records. We need ability to specify NS records for subdomains. (Luckily it's easy to implement by small changes in skin files.)

Why we are unable to edit TXT-record? (So user can't change spf-configuration of his domain.)

DA - great control panel (mainly because of template system and custom scripts). But I wondering why so many of it's features are often incomplete or contains baseless restrictions?
Insuficient DNS-control.
File-editing - but without ability to edit .forward *.inc, *.js and custom files.
Work with archives: tgz creation/extraction - but no zip/bzip2 extraction.

[mdr]

Bringing this one back up the list ;)
Is there any possibilty to add the zone TTL and/or TTL per record in the webinterface in future DA releases?

[Mikej0h]

It would indeed be a great improvement if users (or at least admins) can edit SOA records, MX records and the TTL if a domain.

By the way:
In the current released updates of DirectAdmin the TXT-record are already editable as TS requested...

[dan35]

Same request here :)

[jaumesb]

Wish this one too.

Also interesting will be to have several default configurations to choose from, for instance:

- high values / minimum of DNS traffic
- medium "reasonable" default values
- low values / use before DNS changes so they are quickly spread

on each case in would be nice to inform in newbie-readable format how much time will take for eventual changes to spread fully.

[woyteck]

I'm with this one too.
Also old DNS files (and old pop3 account files) of domains are not deleted after renaming them....

[ecsportal]

Same here. Would be a very nice feature.

[Vlaatje]

Indeed would be verry nice if it could be included :)

[gcypher]

would be nice :D

[jlandes]

I would like to see this too. :)

[mdr]

Hi DA crew,

Is it possible to add this to the feature requests? (change TTL per record/zone via DA...)

[emmanuel]

Up this request for TTL to be editable within DA itself.

[ihostuk]

SOA Edit would be very handy, both admin and reseller levels.

[will-lo]

I would like to edit TTL via DA panel instead of editing manually under shell especially I've linked several servers using multi-server setup. Change 1 zone = change N zone. :/

[DirectAdmin Support]

I'll add it to the to-do list. Not sure when I'll get to it though, as it require a fairly hefty code overhaul, depending on how fancy we get with it.
If we have 1 TTL for all A records, then it's not so bad, but a per record TTL setting would need lots of work ;) The SOA stuff should be fairly simple.

John

[nobaloney]

John, you probably know about this but some other readers may not: There are actually several TTLs in the DNS zone file, but only one is mandatory.

The mandatory one is the one in the SOA record. By default that's used for default TTL for use when a record is not found, and as the default TTL for all records in the zone that don't have their TTL defined some other way.

Then there's the default TTL for all existing zone files. If present it overrides the TTL in the SOA record for ALL existing records that don't have their TTL defined on a per record basis. This isn't mandatory, but if you want to use it you can define it with a $TTL directive at the top of the zonefile.

Finally there's the TTL defined on a per record basis. If it's there, it's used, but it's optional.

And for those who don't know it, the IN field is optional too; it stands for Internet record type, and it's the default. In this case Internet includes lan, wan, and intranet subnets of the Internet. I don't know of anyone actually using any other record type, but the spec is still there.

So, yes, DNS can get a bit complex.

Jeff

[kristian]

I would love to see better zone-control as well. We have a few domains that have MX-records for subdomains pointing to various places, and there is no way of setting that up through the control-panel. It can be done directly in the files from what I understand, and it works, but isn't reflected in the zone-admin. It looks exactly like the normal MX-records for the domain without the host-part.

[switch]

Why we are unable to edit MX-record fully? I mean, we need all 3 fields (not 2) editable.
Because sometimes we need to add MX record for subdomain.
subdomain1 IN MX 10 mail.server1.com.
subdomain2 IN MX 10 mail.server2.com.

I'd like to second ClayRabbit's request above, I'm running into a problem migrating from H-Sphere where I have a LOT of users with custom configurations, and I'm currently pretty much stuck - unable to move these users over because DA can't do this.

[DirectAdmin Support]

Hello,

At the moment, you can do it by creating a new zone for the subdomain.

John

[switch]

Hi John,

The issue that I'm having specifically isn't about a subdomain (I should have read more carefully when I copied above). The issue is that I can't edit the "value" of an MX record.

Say, for example, I want to do the following:

clientdomain.com 86400 IN MX 10 mail.externaldomain.com

Normally this would point to an A record for mail. or whatever, but in many cases my clients have their own external mail systems, and they need the MX pointed out.

How do I do this?

[DirectAdmin Support]

Change the MX from "mail.externaldomain.com" to "some.external.server". Note that DA shows it flipped.. the "mail.externaldomain.com" is on the left in the GUI, but it's on the right in the actual zone file.

Also, you need to tell exim it's external:
http://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=8

John

[nobaloney]

I answered this today in a different thread.

It's just a simple misunderstanding. You can do it; you simply enter mail.externaldomain.com and the number 10. Those are the values. The record is created with your current domain name.

Jeff

[switch]

Change the MX from "mail.externaldomain.com" to "some.external.server". Note that DA shows it flipped.. the "mail.externaldomain.com" is on the left in the GUI, but it's on the right in the actual zone file.

Also, you need to tell exim it's external:
http://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=8

John

Thanks John, that's an answer I can actually understand. Now, to further complicate things, I have a few clients that have in-office mail servers, but they use me as their backup mail server.

So it looks like this:

A Record:

mail.clientdomain.com IN A [client IP address of their mail server]

MX Records:

clientdomain.com IN MX 20 mail.[my web hosting domain].com
clientdomain.com IN MX 10 mail.clientdomain.com

So what this does is send mail traffic to their mail server, but if that fails, it sends mail to the DA server. I have their pop boxes set up the same way they have them set up on their in-office server.

So if someone trips over the power plug in their office, they still get all their mail.

I think this may be the one single thing that was actually much easier and way more flexible in H-Sphere, and it's looking to be pretty impossible in DA. I hope I get proven wrong on that point.

[floyd]

If you want more than one MX record then just add it. Its under the section about managing MX records. I actually have 4 MX records. 2 are fake to control spam and 1 is a backup.

[switch]

Great, thanks floyd